Mal flew through the night. His woman curled around him where she belonged. Except he was returning her to the city where she would leave him forever.

Cheryl rejected him.

She hated his lair. She negated their marriage. She refused his touch, his passion, him.

“I need to get my tablet,” she said, as the sprawling suburban lights clustered into the metropolis beneath them. “It’s at the school you kidnapped me from yesterday.”

He returned to the college gallery. The upper floors and windows were locked tight. He descended to the main doors. They were also locked.

“God, it’s so late.” She peered through the full-length windows. Her teeth made a chattering sound, and the windows rattled under her fingers. “I wonder if they left it on the table. Maybe my professor has it.”

She texted her professor. He indeed had her tablet at his house and was also willing to meet with her to finish her portfolio review. She whitened. “I can’t get there at this hour.”

“I will take you,” Mal said.

“Okay. And then do you mind waiting? I know it’s late. He lives in Tigard.”

Tigard was in the southwest quadrant for Portland and her home was in the northeast.

Of course Mal could take her. The hour was before midnight. Didn’t she realize he had come home early? To see her? He usually stayed awake at the office far later.

“I do not mind.”

She breathed out and wrapped her trusting arms around his neck. Her head rested on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

His chest squeezed.

He ascended.

In his arms was where she belonged. In his arms was how she must remain.

But she rejected him.

The pain stabbed into his vulnerable, human chest like ten swords. He endured it through the flight and, arriving at the destination, while waiting through the portfolio review.

The professor emerged from an ordinary bungalow-style house, walked down the cement walkway, and handed Cheryl her digital art tablet. “I glanced through while waiting. Did you have anything to add?”

She clutched her thin black tablet to her chest and shook her head.

“Then, neither do I. It’s more of what we discussed. The only thing left is grades.”

While they spoke, Mal watched from the shadows.

The streetlight shone down on Cheryl. Framed by her dark, long-sleeved hoodie, the light reflected her quiet, serious expression.

Her profile made his chest ache.

This was not the first time he had looked at something that would never be his and endured the pain of it. He growled under his breath. Endure it.

When his father was killed in a mining accident and had to be cremated in an anonymous mass grave rather than honored in the aristocratic family tomb, Mal endured. When everyone said he and his low-class siblings would die the same meaningless deaths, he endured. When even his own siblings didn’t believe in his crazy dream to make their fortune on a distant planet named Earth, he endured.

All that pain had crystallized into a sharp, green stone burning in the center of his chest and pushed him harder to win. To work more, to dare impossibilities, to fly into the darkness and succeed.

They had landed here on Earth, the company had prospered, and he had almost proved that the low-class Outer Rim Onyx family was important. It was too late for his father, but perhaps Mals’ death would someday be celebrated with a giant, horizon-darkening bier in the heart of Draconis itself.

His glorious passing would not be mourned by Cheryl. He had given her everything. She didn’t need him.

The pain stabbed deeper.

Endure it.

“Am I going to pass?” she was asking her professor.

The human male yawned. “What do you think?”

She remained pale and quiet.

“You missed most of your portfolio review. You’re still creating cutesy art. You can’t identify your own best work for the gallery show.”

“Did I fail?” she whispered.

“I don’t like to fail students,” he said. “So do your assignment. Bring three show pieces to the Student-Employer Art Show next week. Make them your best work. If employers assault you with bags of cash, you’ll know your grade.”

Their conference concluded and her professor returned to his house. Cheryl carried the tablet to Mal. Her eyes shone with moisture.

“So, that’s done.” She sniffed and put her arms around him again. “Now, home.”

Not their home. Hers.

Mal rose into the air, endured the ache as he crossed the short distance, and landed in front of a squat beige building. The windows were dark, and it seemed empty.

“Mom must be at work.” She stepped back and clutched her tablet. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

Her shining eyes skated away from him, unable to maintain contact. He hadn’t realized how clearly she always looked at him. Even before, when she was just an intern, she met his gaze directly. Now, she receded in every way. The distance was already an uncrossable chasm.

“Assuming I still have a job.” She tucked an unruly strand of hair behind her ear.

“Why must you assume so?” he asked.

“Because, you know, this.” She wiggled a finger between them. “Sleeping with the boss. It’s not good.”

Sleeping with him hadn’t been good?

Another truth slammed into his chest: Sex had been bad. He should have studied the educational human sexuality videos on the XXX channel more carefully. He should have made himself into the kind of male she would desire and then given her the pleasure she deserved.

“Jasper is your boss,” he pointed out. “Do not sleep with him.”

“Oh, god no. Just… never mind.” She turned to go into the house and leave him.

He had given her everything. She did not want him.

Endure it.

A magnetic force grabbed his heart in its fist and yanked him after her.

He crossed the distance to Cheryl in a single stride and enveloped her soft body in a hug, pressing her back against his chest.

She stopped, surprised, and then she curled a palm around his forearm and remained still.

What was he doing?

He had endured a thousand hardships. A thousand pains. He had allowed himself no sleep for weeks and no wing stretches for years. He did not break when people discarded him. He kept them at a distance so it didn’t hurt—even though it always did. That sudden shock of realizing only he cared never wore off. He just had to work harder. He was so close. He just had to work.

Let Cheryl go and endure it.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t endure losing her. He wasn’t number one yet. But he couldn’t let her go.

She shifted her weight onto her heels. “Mal?”

“I need you with me.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “You didn’t think about me at all today.”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“You liar.”

“It’s the truth.”

She swallowed and partially turned toward his face. Her soft cheek brushed his bicep. “But you left me all alone.”

“I’m sorry.” He rested his forehead against the back of her head and buried his nose in her silky hair. “I wanted to keep you away from me so I could focus on the company. But it didn’t work. I was coming home early to meet you because I couldn’t stand being apart any longer.”

She licked her lips. “You know I got stuck in that house.”

“Yes. I was aware this would occur.”

She turned in his arms. Anger resurfaced along with self-righteous triumph. “You knew!”

He owned his mistake as he owned her, in his arms. “I did not consider your wishes. I wanted to lock you up in my lair so you would claim it as yours. That way, you would stay with me forever.”

Her cheeks spotted with color even as the street light washed out the rest of her face and lips to pale white. “Even though we’re not really married?”

“I’ll fix it so we are.” He stroked her soft side, savoring the sensation of her body in his arms.

Her lids half closed, then snapped open. “You still tricked me.”

Whatever he had done, he owned it, regretted it, released it. Pressing her soft derriere against his hardening cock, he nuzzled the cool skin at her nape and teased her to delicious gasps with his teeth. “I thought the application was all humans required. I conducted insufficient research.”

“But you knew we weren’t married by the dragon way.”

He drew back. She turned in his arms. Her eyes fixed on him, worried and hopeful.

“The dragon way requires presenting a dragonlet recognized by the family matriarch.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re not married until after you’ve had a kid together?”

“Correct.”

That was why his parents’ marriage had never been recognized. His mother presented seven dragonlets to their full-blooded, aristocratic grandmother, and none were deemed worthy. Not him, not any of his siblings. None.

His blood boiled.

But this was about the woman in his arms. The one he wished to already be married to. “I’ll call your Justice of the Peace tomorrow.”

She looked over her shoulder at the house.

He nuzzled her neck in the sensitive soft spot below her ear and squeezed her curvy waist, grinding her hot cleft against his cock, using all of his powers to coerce her to give in to his demands. “Return with me. Come now.”

She sucked in a long breath. “Mal…”

He kissed her lips.

She yielded to him, moving her mouth on his with a searing heat. He crushed her softness to him. She moaned. He took advantage of her parted lips to deepen their connection, branding her with his tongue, pumping into her mouth and drawing hotter moans.

She slipped her cool hands under his silk shirt and rested on his hips. He could have purred. He kissed down her jaw to her delicate neck.

“Mal.” She dug her nails into his back. “You can’t leave me at that place ever again.”

“I promise.” He sucked on the artful column of her neck, tracing her fluttering pulse with his tongue.

“God.” She clung to him. “You’re cheating. I forget why I was so mad.”

Yes. Forget. He would earn back her forgiveness with his will.

“We can’t do this on the street.” She sighed and gripped his collar to stop him. “Let me get a couple things from the house.”

He released her at her wish and followed her into the small building. The brown carpets were dark and worn, and the furnishings shabby. It smelled a little like her and a lot like an older female, suggesting this was her mother’s lair.

Cheryl shook papers out of a torn cloth tote bag and put in granola bars and creamy peanut butter. She padded down the hall to the bathroom and flicked on the light.

He stalked after her. “I provided everything a female needs.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t see toothpaste.” She wiggled the mostly compressed tube at him and dropped it in the bag, frowned at the rest of the clutter, and clicked off the light.

Had he forgotten toothpaste? Dragons used lasers for sterilizing and whitening, and many humans did so now as well. Perhaps this comforting relic had escaped his notice.

She padded down the dim, street-lit hallway to the single bedroom. A bedraggled sheet hung from a line tacked across the middle of the room, dividing it into two spaces. Cheryl ducked under the sheet and rummaged in an open cardboard box.

“You share a sleeping room with your mother.”

“What else are you going to do in a one-bedroom?” She looked up at him in challenge. “Anyway, she’s never home, so it’s like having my own.”

“It looks like a comfortable nest.”

The honesty made her hackles go down. She opened a box of drawings and art supplies, looked at her bag, and grimaced.

“Do you wish to take the box?” He could secure it if she wished.

She shook her head. “I wish I’d had a chance to ask my mom which pieces to submit for my final review. Then I wouldn’t have been short.”

“You draw quickly.”

“None of it’s commercial.” She rubbed her forehead hard with her fingertips as though trying to push in the knowledge she needed to make a commercial piece. “My professor’s trying to help me succeed. I don’t want to be a starving artist.”

“My wife will never starve.”

She glanced at him. “I’m just kidding. But I want to… I don’t know. Make my degree worthwhile. Accomplish something big after I graduate so my mom can see the sacrifices of the last four years were worth it. So I don’t let her down.”

Ah. He understood wishing to prove his skills.

“I will judge your review pieces,” he offered.

She snorted and closed the box. “It’s okay.”

Irritation crackled. She was hiding from him again. Even though they were not baring their skin, hiding her art felt the same. He rose to his full height. “Show me.”

“Maybe another time.”

“Now.”

“Forget it.” She returned the box to its pile. “It’s my old work, anyway. My new pieces are on my tablet. I’ll show you at the house.”

Desperation clawed at him. A strange need, a hunger not to be denied. “Do not withhold yourself from me.”

“Withhold?” She lifted one brow like he was crazy. “Look. I’m exhausted, I’m sore everywhere, I’m hungry again, and I’m actually still mad at you. So let me finish packing and we’ll be out of here.”

The determination in her brown eyes centered him. It calmed the desperation and reassured his inner fears. She was not withholding herself. Not when she looked at him firmly.

“You’re sore everywhere?” He hoped it was not from escape attempts. Curse his assumption she would be happy to nest all day in the lair he had built for her. “Why?”

She reddened. “I sort of used muscles that had never been used before. You know.”

He didn’t know.

“Last night.” She blushed harder. “When we were together. In the bed. Together.”

Ah. “This is why the sex was bad? Because it caused you soreness?”

“What? It wasn’t bad.”

“You said it was bad.”

“I did not.”

He opened his mouth to protest.

She held up her hand to stall him. “It was great. It was… well, it was life-changing. And great. Or, at least, I thought so.” She bit her lip in concern.

Another small pain in him eased. The sex had not been bad. It had been great. He could improve upon great.

“It changed my life also,” he said.

She released her lip. Her smile softened. “Oh. Okay. Good.”

“I will ease your soreness.”

Her smile quirked. “I didn’t expect it to be so vigorous. It’s like exercise. Good exercise, but I should have stretched first.” She returned to packing.

Despite her reassurance, a niggling awareness told him he had missed something. In his desperation to have her to himself, he had forgotten a critical point. A critical point that was becoming clearer and more terrible with every passing second.

He had ignored her needs.

Not just her wishes.

Her needs.

She looked at her things, stuffed a few more clothing items in the tote bag, and tried to heave it onto her shoulder. It was over-stuffed and slid down her elbow to the floor with a thump.

He pulled the bag from her grip, desperate to correct his mistakes. “Give it to me.”

“Don’t drop it.” She led him out of the house, locked the front door, and linked her arms around his neck. “I don’t want to lose my underwear in someone’s front yard.”

“I provided you with underwear.”

She nestled closer as they zoomed through the air. “Probably not in my size.”

Had he not? He flew faster, eager to return her to their lair and check his own preparations.

Once at the house, he kept his grip on her and flew through to their bedroom, releasing her inside to examine the closet. In fact, yes, in the drawers he caused to emerge from the closet walls, he had gathered multiple sizes of underwear, including some that would surely fit her.

He lifted a fistful of panties. “Try these. One will fit.”

“Maybe later.” She shivered and hugged herself.

“Now.”

“Mal, come on.” She laughed through her shivers. “I just flew through a blizzard. The last thing I want to do is take off my clothes.”

He didn’t understand.

She tilted her head. Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “It’s snowing outside. Aren’t you cold?”

“I do not feel cold. All temperatures on this planet are within my comfort zone.”

“Even the south pole?” She rubbed her arms. “What about the inside of a volcano?”

“That is too hot,” he admitted. “I prefer temperatures between negative one hundred fifty degrees and positive two hundred degrees Fahrenheit.”

Her mouth dropped open. “That’s almost boiling.”

“Yes, I prefer not boiling.”

But this conversation led him deeper into the uncomfortable conclusion he had begun to reach at her house.

For the umpteenth time today, his desires overrode hers. His actions caused her pain. His demands prolonged her suffering, and he didn’t even notice.

He had provided food, but he hadn’t shown her how to access it. He had given her a perfect lair, but he hadn’t allowed her the freedom to leave it. He had been so eager to return and show off his offerings he had exceeded her temperature comfort range and had frozen her. And then he had been so determined to prove himself right he neglected to assuage that pain.

She was exhausted, sore, and hungry. Because of his flight, she was also cold. He had allowed this to happen. She had suffered from his inattention.

He paid attention to the tiniest insignificant detail in his company.

He did not pay attention to his wife.

That changed now.

She rolled her shoulders, still hugging herself for warmth. “I could stand a little boiling right now.”

Because of his neglect.

“I will draw you a bath.”

She looked at him. A frown stole over her face. “Oh. That’s okay. You don’t have to do that.”

“Please.” He strode to her side. Paying attention—really paying attention—was what he should have done from the moment she agreed to his proposal. “Let me care for you.”

Her eyes turned shiny again, and her lower lip trembled. She covered it with her hand. “Care… for me?”

“Come.” He took her hand and drew her into the bathroom. “I will attend to your needs and tell you all you wish to know.”